tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:39:50 +0000RScienceDinosaursEvolutionHumorHumourTriviaFossilsVanitymathematicspalaeobiogeographypalaeogeographypaleobiogeographypaleogeographyAPEAcademiaBiogeographyBirdsBruce SpringsteenCatsFacebookFantasy FootballFlightFootballGoatsLiverpoolMammalsMedia-whoringNewsObamaPalaeontologyPersonalPhDPlantsRadioheadSpeciesWebfishgeologic timelagerstättephylogenystratigraphytime scalethis life's a fictionhttp://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)Blogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-4951044410439774839Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:04:00 +00002011-08-07T21:01:42.985+00:00Batman links<div align="center"><a href="http://survivingtheworld.net/Lesson887.html"><img src="http://survivingtheworld.net/Lesson887.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1870"><img src="http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-1881.png"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.seecolinslash.com/eric/images/batman.jpg"><img src="http://www.seecolinslash.com/eric/images/batman.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20110207/"><img src="http://v.cdn.cad-comic.com/comics/cad-20110207-8702f.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://blog.zeromojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/jokers-big.gif"><img src="http://blog.zeromojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/jokers-big.gif"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://blastr.com/2011/06/image-of-the-day-why-batm.php?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter"><img src="http://blastr.com/assets_c/2011/06/ImageoftheDayBatmanSherlockHomes062911-thumb-550x1117-65580.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://corcholat.com/!GCp"><img src="http://img.corcholat.com/img/de_corvette_a_batimobil_modelo_89_dQC_wide.jpg"><br>(Click image for more.)</a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/07/15/1858258/Man-Builds-Turbine-Powered-Batmobile?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29">Turbine powered batmobile.</a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://humourtouch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/One-Proud-Justice-League-Team.jpg"><img src="http://humourtouch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/One-Proud-Justice-League-Team.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal01/2011/5/3/13/enhanced-buzz-4344-1304444478-11.jpg"><img src="http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal01/2011/5/3/13/enhanced-buzz-4344-1304444478-11.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://i.imgur.com/zCdVu.jpg"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/zCdVu.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/08/the-batman-equation.html"><img src="http://blog.makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/the-wayne-equation-600x619.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lov17hg4mD1qzyb10o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1312754867&Signature=mAaevWF5wXU9qc0R6A7fydga0gk%3D"><img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lov17hg4mD1qzyb10o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1312754867&Signature=mAaevWF5wXU9qc0R6A7fydga0gk%3D"></a></div><br><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2011/03/batman-links.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-3540504646797970682Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:05:00 +00002011-08-06T22:19:01.199+00:00Bibliophile links<div align="center"><a href="http://www.everydaypeoplecartoons.com/cartoons/489-books.gif"><img src="http://www.everydaypeoplecartoons.com/cartoons/489-books.gif"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.demotivation.us/newest/all/books-1247061.html">How books work.</a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://9gag.com/gag/85637/"><img src="http://d3uwin5q170wpc.cloudfront.net/photo/85637_700b.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.quickmeme.com/Judgmental-Bookseller-Ostrich/">Judgemental Bookseller Ostrich.</a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.unshelved.com/2011-3-4"><img src="http://get.unshelved.com/strips/20110304.gif"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://flavorwire.com/165532/how-to-get-insulted-by-authors">How to get insulted by authors</a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.baneplanet.com/img/architecture/library/library6.jpg"><img src="http://www.baneplanet.com/img/architecture/library/library6.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/underpuppy/12252359/">Another personal library to be jealous of.</a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://themetapicture.com/media/cat-statue-book-turn-page-540x545.jpg"><img src="http://themetapicture.com/media/cat-statue-book-turn-page-540x545.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher/philip-hensher-fiction-takes-you-to-places-that-life-cant-2309538.html">Why we should all read fiction.</a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4687885570_bfd3088056_b.jpg"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4687885570_bfd3088056_b.jpg"></a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://www.yongestreetmedia.ca/features/humanbooks1208.aspx">Unusual new library stock.</a></div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/5b6b8deac7ba248a129e8cca910d2b5e406600de_m.jpg"><img src="http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/5b6b8deac7ba248a129e8cca910d2b5e406600de_m.jpg"></a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2011/03/bibliophile-links.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-6999142660845256299Sun, 09 Jan 2011 19:12:00 +00002011-01-14T15:30:33.579+00:00My 2010 reading list<p>For no particular reason here is a list of stuff I read in 2010.</p><h4>Fiction</h4><ul><li><em>'Salem's Lot</em>. My first Stephen King book. It was OK, but not enough to make me into an instant fan.<li><em>Fragile Things</em>. A collection of Neil Gaiman short stories. Mostly pretty good.<li><em>American Gods</em>. Another Gaiman, the longest one I've read of his. It's pretty good.<li><em>The Name Of The Rose</em>. I was curious to read this for ages. It's good, although more interesting for the historical exposition than the whodunnit.<li><em>The Confusion</em> and <em>The System Of The World</em>. These are the last two books of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy. I can't praise them highly enough, easily my favourite read of the year and one of the few books I've ever read that I can say I would instantly read again.<li><em>The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo</em>, <em>The Girl Who Played With Fire</em> and <em>The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest</em>. Almost everyone has probably already read these. Personally i found them entertaining page turners, particularly the latter half of the second book, but these will not be classics for the ages.<li><em>Pirate Latitudes</em>. A farewell to the author I have been most faithful too as a reader. It's typical Crichton fare, but without the opinionated ranting of his latter offerings.</ul><h4>Non-fiction</h4><ul><li><em>Bad Science</em>. Most of you will already be familiar with Ben Goldacre's stuff, but this was a good read and I did learn a bit about medical science.<li><em>Life: An Unauthorised Biography</em>. This was part of my bookmark liberation resolution. I started reading this back as an undergrad a decade ago. I don't know why I stopped, it's very well written and despite covering so much stuff I should already know, entertaining and informative.<li><em>Undaunted Courage</em>. My first book of the year and a Christmas present. I wanted to read this as my 2009 US road trip followed a similar route to this biography of the Lewis and Clark expedition. It's interesting stuff.<li><em>Fearless Symmetry</em>. This is a maths book about the proof for Fermat's Theorem. It's pretty well written, although I can't claim to grasp it all I did come away with a better understanding of why it eluded a solution for so long. Of course it still doesn't answer the question of whether Fermat really did have a proof, but it seems unlikely it was the same one.<li><em>Theology And The Scientific Imagination</em>. Another bookmark liberation tome. This is tough stuff, a lot of untranslated Latin and Greek quotes. No doubt a more informed reader would get more out of it, but nevertheless it contains some interesting ideas.<li><em>The Palaeobiological Revolution</em>. This was a review copy so I should just refer you to what I wrote in the <a href="http://newsletter.palass-pubs.org/pdf/News75.pdf">PalAss newsletter</a>.<li><em>Love All The People</em>. I read this after watching <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179947/">American: The Bill Hicks Story</a>. It's basically just transcripts of his shows plus some other bits and bobs. Apart from a lot of repetition it was good to relive some of his material.<li><em>The Prehistory Of The Mind</em>. Probably my first venture into human origins popular science reading. He has some interesting ideas, but I'm still skeptical about how testable such anthropological/archaeological ideas are, but then perhaps I'm just a scientific snob.</ul><h4>Comics/Graphic Novels</h4><p>2010 was marked by my getting into comics/graphic novels in a big way. Previously I'd basically only read <em>Calvin and Hobbes</em> and <em>The Far Side</em>, plus a little Manga. However, I decided I wanted to reread <em>Tintin</em> and <em>Asterix</em> from my youth as well as explore Batman, a character I've always loved.</p><ul><li><em>The Complete Maus</em>. Recommended by a friend who hadn't even read it. This is an important book and grown up enough to be the obvious go-to when ignorant people tell you comics are for kids. (I should point out that its subject matter is the holocaust.)<li><em>Adventures Of Tintin (Vol. 1)</em>. The first three Tintin stories. This is the only book I've read that comes with a special red sticker warning you of its racist content (referring to the Congo story). Although the Russia story is more historically interesting as clear anti-communist propaganda.<li><em>Asterix The Gaul</em> and <em>Asterix And The Golden Sickle</em>. The first two Asterix books. It's interesting to revisit these as I haven't read them since I was a kid. Sadly despite my many years of education since I still don't get all the Latin jokes.<li><em>Batman: The Killing Joke</em>. The first Batman I read. It's a pretty good story and I liked the art.<li><em>Batman: Year One</em>. Although top of most people's Batman lists I wasn't that impressed by this. Mind you having learnt a lot more about the character since it's probably worth revisiting.<li><em>Batman: The Dark Knight Returns</em>. I liked this story, although I'm not a fan of the art. It's always fun to see Batman take down Superman.<li><em>Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again</em>. Again I liked this follow up story, but not the art.<li><em>Batman: Dark Knight Dynasty</em>. This is the only 'Elseworlds' tale I've read and I hated it. The whole what-if-Batman-existed-at-other-times-and-places thing is not for me.<li><em>Batman: Strange Apparitions</em>. My only taste of 70's Batman. It's not for me, things have definitely improved, although having read the first few stories they likely took a turn for the worse before they got better. So far the best stories are from the early 2000's.<li><em>Batman: The Wrath</em>. Not so good, basically this is a what-if parallel tale of a guy with a similar history and resources to Batman that became a bad guy.<li><em>Batman: Death And The City</em>. I liked the art, particularly Scarface and his new 'handler', but the story wasn't great.<li><em>Batman: The Bat And The Cat</em>. I really liked this, easily the funniest Batman I've read (although he barely appears in it). The jokes are in both the writing and the visuals. Recommended. (Just don't read it on the bus/train.)<li><em>Batman: New Gotham 1: Evolution</em>. This was mostly confusing for me as it follows up the much longer No Man's Land story arc. The art is from a very restricted colour palette and didn't really work for me.<li><em>Batman: Contagion</em>. The first issue of this is the worst Batman art I've seen, I honestly think I could do better. However, it improves and it's a good story that precedes Cataclysm and No Man's Land.<li><em>Batman: No Man's Land 1</em> and <em>Batman: No Man's Land 2</em>. These are the first two of five volumes. I really like them, the story is great and so is some of the art. Probably the best story arc I've read so far.<li><em>Batman: Arkham Asylum</em>. The best selling Batman story, but undeservedly so in my opinion. Morrison's writing is unbelievably pretentious and although the art is technically amazing, it's not for me. I especially hate the pointy-shouldered Batman.<li><em>Batman: Deathblow</em>. Again, the art here is technically impressive, but I think this more photo-realistic approach actually works against the believability of it all. This story is also a bit too gritty for my (Batman) tastes and besides there wasn't enough Batman anyway.<li><em>Batman: War Games Act 1</em>, <em>Batman: War Games Act 2</em> and <em>Batman: War Games Act 3</em>. This is a pretty good story arc with some good art and includes a character death. (Unfortunately I still haven't encountered this character much so it's a bit lost on me who they are.)<li><em>Batman: The Long Halloween</em>. A very different feel to much of the Batman I've read, but this whodunnit is a really good story and includes a Two-face origin to boot.<li><em>Batman: Dark Victory</em>. Follow up to the latter and best read that way. This is just as good if not better, I certainly prefer Sale's art on this one - I particularly think his Selina Kyle/Catwoman has improved between the two. This also contains the only decent Robin (Dick) origin story I've read.<li><em>Batman: Bruce Wayne: Murderer?</em>. The first volume in a what may turn out to be my favourite story arc so far. What if Bruce Wayne got arrested for murder? How can he be Batman from in prison? Did he do it or was he framed? If he was framed, was it Bruce Wayne's enem(ies) or Batman's?<li><em>Batgirl: Silent Running</em> and <em>Batgirl: A Knight Alone</em>. The first two collections of the Cassandra Cain Batgirl. She's an interesting character and has turned up in several other story arcs I've read. I find <a href="http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/40/76554-142145-batgirl_super.jpg">her costume</a> the scariest of the batman 'sidekicks'.<li><em>Robin/Batgirl: Fresh Blood</em>. Art a bit too cartoony for my tastes and the story felt too much like a segue rather than a stand alone.<li><em>Robin: Year One</em>. The story here is OK, but it was the art I really liked as it has a cool retro feel.<li><em>Huntress: Year One</em>. A cool albeit peripheral character from the Batman universe that I wanted to read more of. I mostly liked the story and the art.<li><em>JLA/Titans: The Technis Imperative</em>, <em>JLA: Pain Of The Gods</em> and <em>Titans: Titans East</em>. This is my attempt to try out some JLA and Titans stuff. It's not for me. I can't be doing with superheroes with superpowers. I'm just waiting for Batman to show up.<li><em>Iron Man vs. Whiplash</em>. My only flirtation with Marvel. This was probably a bad choice as it's basically a rubbish spin off from the second film. However, I like the character so might try again in the New Year.</ul><p>Some additional link blogging for Batman is here:<ul><li><a href="http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20080714">The problem with the Batman origin story</a><li><a href="http://files.redux.com/images/fc7349641c48a03bbd5dbd1d8b41ec03/condthumb460x600">More of the same</a><li><a href="http://www.cracked.com/funny-4220-batman-utility-belt/">Cracked.com piece on his utility belt</a><li><a href="http://www.cracked.com/funny-5627-batman-vs.-superman/">Cracked.com piece on why he's better than Superman</a><li><a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_16870_the-20-most-ridiculous-batman-comics-ever-released.html">Some of the awful Batman stories from down the years</a></ul></p><h4>Audio Books</h4><p>Finally here are some audiobooks I listened too for free from <a href="http://librivox.org/">librivox.org/</a><ul><li><em>Alice In Wonderland</em><li><em>From The Earth To The Moon</em> and <em>Round The Moon</em><li><em>My Man Jeeves</em><li><em>War Of The Worlds</em></ul></p><hr><h4>Update</h4><p>Oops, forgot some:<ul><li><em>Batman: Hush</em>. How could I forget this? Definitely the prettiest comic I've read, Jim Lee's art is amazing. The story is pretty good too, although there is a bit too much exposition re: Batman's back story. However, this does kinda make this ideal for a first Batman comic if you're thinking of getting into these things.<li><em>Batman: Under The Cowl</em>. Not a story arc, but a collection of different issues where, for many and eclectic reasons, the guy under the cowl isn't Bruce Wayne. To be expected I liked some and not others, but there is an amusing gem in here.<li><em>Watchmen</em>. Moore's opus magnum. This is really good, although it no doubt improves the deeper into comics you get. Another one I can't believe I forgot!</ul></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-2010-reading-list.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-6926919428416093109Sun, 03 Oct 2010 17:34:00 +00002010-10-03T17:57:56.659+00:00Bibliophile links<div align="center"><a href=""><img src="http://danidraws.com/images/library.jpg" border="1"></img></a></div><p>Just some link-blogging this time.</p><p>Here is yet more <a href="http://www.funzug.com/index.php/travel/15-incredible-libraries-around-the-world.html">library porn</a>, and I have now discovered <a href="http://bookshelfporn.com/archive">bookshelf porn</a> (more <a href="http://www.desiretoinspire.net/blog/2010/4/15/reader-request-bookshelves.html">here</a>).</p><p>No discerning bibliophile can be without these <a href="http://www.makemymood.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/bed-read-sheet.jpg">awesome bed sheets</a>.</p><p>I'm not sure if i agree with this <a href="http://laurenleto.wordpress.com/readers-by-author/">list of authors and the people who read them</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.spreeder.com/app.php?intro=1">Here</a> is a useful web app to help you read at speed.</p><div align="center"><a href="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01449/1999-giant-book_1449042i.jpg"><img src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01449/1999-giant-book_1449042i.jpg" border="1"></img></a></div><p><a href="http://www.fotolog.com/breakfast_cereal/47131187">Here</a> is a bibliophilic origin for a theological construct!</p><p>An interesting <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/12879013">video diary</a> of a disappointed book.</p><p>I feel rather embarrassed that I never knew about the story of <a href="http://bookstove.com/book-talk/the-making-hay-a-kingdom-built-on-books/">Hay-on-Wye</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.recyclart.org/2010/09/library-information-desk/">Here</a> is the coolest ever library information desk.</p><p>The book <a href="http://www.simplysharing.com/book.htm">as technology</a>.</p><p>Finally here are not <a href="http://www.sadanduseless.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/boots.jpg">one</a>, but <a href="http://www.sadanduseless.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/books.jpg">two</a> important pieces of advice. (I can honestly say I've adhered to the latter, I'm probably safe from the former.)</p><p>Well that's it for now, but I am looking forward to a bibliophilic pilgrimage I have planned for next month with <a href="http://jdorcutt.blogspot.com/">The Oregon Trail</a> to the world-famous <a href="http://www.powells.com/">Powell's</a>. I have wanted to go there for at least a couple of years and will finally be proximal enough with a post-GSA trip.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2010/10/bibliophile-links.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-3384759807016477344Sun, 03 Oct 2010 08:21:00 +00002010-10-03T17:53:36.731+00:00Tropical Zoo<div align="center"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKg_5Q_a0sI/AAAAAAAAAKE/yaVLXbVBmiI/s1600/IMG_0017.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 480px; height: 360px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKg_5Q_a0sI/AAAAAAAAAKE/yaVLXbVBmiI/s400/IMG_0017.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523735196015973058" /></a>We couldn't find Cynthia...</div><br><div align="center"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhAVlKaAKI/AAAAAAAAAKM/hnAWNS5bzOM/s1600/IMG_0018.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 480px; height: 360px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhAVlKaAKI/AAAAAAAAAKM/hnAWNS5bzOM/s400/IMG_0018.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523735682467102882" /></a>...but here's Elvis</div><p>Yesterday I went with a friend to Brentford. It's pretty dull round there, but if you know where to look there is a cooler place hidden away inside: <a href="http://www.tropicalzoo.org/">The Tropical Zoo</a>.</p><div align="center"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhCXqi_eDI/AAAAAAAAAKk/lzSBbPDgxME/s1600/IMG_0021.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 480px; height: 360px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhCXqi_eDI/AAAAAAAAAKk/lzSBbPDgxME/s400/IMG_0021.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523737917295392818" /></a>Toitles</div><p>This isn't a normal zoo though. Firstly because it is populated to a large degree by animals seized by UK customs and donations, often of exotic pets that got too much for their owners. However, what really makes it cool is the interaction they offer.</p><div align="center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhHVAKNc6I/AAAAAAAAAK8/sQnkvBqH2Zw/s1600/IMG_0027.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 360px; height: 480px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhHVAKNc6I/AAAAAAAAAK8/sQnkvBqH2Zw/s400/IMG_0027.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523743369115562914" /></a>They have a lot of African Greys</div><p>We saw two of their shows, the first being reptile-dominated with various lizards, a couple of snakes and finally a caiman crocodile being brought ought by the keepers. The second was a flying demonstration with an Asian Eagle Owl. However, unlike a normal show the audience is invited to touch and even hold some of the animals. It was pretty cool to feel the heft of a massive constrictor and stroke a crocodile although I wasn't brave enough to hold the tarantula.</p><div align="center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhCpwKFL0I/AAAAAAAAAKs/okqsUYEVf9Q/s1600/IMG_0025.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 360px; height: 480px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhCpwKFL0I/AAAAAAAAAKs/okqsUYEVf9Q/s400/IMG_0025.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523738228039167810" /></a>A jealous cockatoo</div><p>All in all this was a pretty cool experience for a (cheap for london) £6.50 entry so I am duly recommending it to all you Nodnol residents. It is worth a trip before health and safety regs step in and such things become impossible. Also, due to development they are about to lose their present home and need the money to fund the cost of their new site.</p><div align="center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhF4iQbawI/AAAAAAAAAK0/ypnnHIsxt6k/s1600/IMG_0026.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 360px; height: 480px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/TKhF4iQbawI/AAAAAAAAAK0/ypnnHIsxt6k/s400/IMG_0026.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523741780540615426" /></a>We weren't brave enough to check what the label meant</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2010/10/tropical-zoo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-5198046052160912427Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:40:00 +00002010-08-05T21:40:49.552+00:00Drunky Monkey<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pSm7BcQHWXk&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pSm7BcQHWXk&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2010/08/drunky-monkey.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-2169296637840384414Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:54:00 +00002010-07-28T14:05:41.519+00:00If palaeontology was an xbox game...<div align="center"><embed swliveconnect="true" allowscriptaccess="samedomain" width="424" height="76" src="http://www.justachieveit.com/justachieveit2.swf?d=Scale bar&gs=10&s=y" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed><embed swliveconnect="true" allowscriptaccess="samedomain" width="424" height="76" src="http://www.justachieveit.com/justachieveit2.swf?d=Abacus&gs=25&s=y" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed><embed swliveconnect="true" allowscriptaccess="samedomain" width="424" height="76" src="http://www.justachieveit.com/justachieveit2.swf?d=Proc.+Usher+Soc.+Paper&gs=50&s=y" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed><embed swliveconnect="true" allowscriptaccess="samedomain" width="424" height="76" src="http://www.justachieveit.com/justachieveit2.swf?d=Species+epithet&gs=100&s=y" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2010/07/if-palaeontology-was-xbox-game.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-7692887035730240291Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:32:00 +00002010-07-15T11:46:56.573+00:00Oh dear...<p>Just put my last post through <a href="http://iwl.me/">this site</a> and, oh dear...</p><!-- Begin I Write Like Badge --><br /><div style="overflow:auto;border:2px solid #ddd;font:20px/1.2 Arial,sans-serif;width:380px;padding:5px; background:#F7F7F7; color:#555"><img src="http://s.iwl.me/w.png" style="float:right" width="120"><div style="padding:20px; border-bottom:1px solid #eee; text-shadow:#fff 0 1px"> I write like<br><a href="http://iwl.me/w/cfe99843" style="font-size:30px;color:#698B22;text-decoration:none">Dan Brown</a></div><p style="font-size:11px; text-align:center; color:#888"><em>I Write Like</em> by Mémoires, <a href="http://www.codingrobots.com/memoires/" style="color:#888">Mac journal software</a>. <a href="http://iwl.me" style="color:#333; background:#FFFFE0"><b>Analyze your writing!</b></a></p></div><br /><!-- End I Write Like Badge --><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2010/07/oh-dear.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-742600209837697719Sat, 10 Jul 2010 17:07:00 +00002010-07-18T11:49:53.657+00:00Open source: doing my bit<p>Although I can hardly claim to be a prolific blogger I do visit this page regularly to look for updates of other people's blogs (see list at left). One of these (<a href="http://openpaleo.blogspot.com/">The Open Source Paleontologist</a>) is concerned with the public availability of both data and primary literature. Needless to say I agree with much of what is written there. As many of my readers wll know I also maintain my own site: <a href="http://www.graemetlloyd.com/">http://www.graemetlloyd.com</a>, where I try and do my bit. As is often the way with these things my ambition for what should be there goes well beyond my actual motivation to produce it. However, there is some stuff that people apparently do find useful and prompted by some recent comments I thought I'd take an opportunity to advertise what is there for those that haven't visited.</p><h4>1. Dinosaur supertree bonus material</h4><p>First off there is extra data from my <a href="http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/macro/supertree/index.html">dinosaur supertree paper</a>, produced with my colleagues over at <a href="http://mambobob-raptorsnest.blogspot.com/">Raptor's Nest</a> and <a href="http://rachisaurus.blogspot.com/">Museological Meanderings</a>. <a href="http://www.graemetlloyd.com/cont.html">This</a> includes the MRP matrices (as NEXUS files), the original tree and XML files, as well as <a href="http://cran.r-project.org/">R</a> source <a href="http://www.graemetlloyd.com/pubdata/dinorare.r">code for the subsampling analyses</a>. Apparently somebody has used this code so it was worthwhile!</p><h4>2. Dinosaur matrix list</h4><p>In conjunction with the above I have been collating a <a href="http://www.graemetlloyd.com/data.html">list of published cladistic analyses of dinosaurs</a>. Many of these come from the supertree project, but I have kept an eye out for more recent things and just yesterday updated my list, so presently it is current. I also include NEXUS files of the matrices plus MPTs where I've had time to produce them. Again, this list has been used by at least a few people, but I have no doubt there are publications I've missed so for those keen enough to point them out I would be glad of the info. My eventual aim is to produce a proper relational database that allows automated creation of MRP files and hence an "instant" up-to-date formal supertree of the group.</p><h4>3. Tree dating code</h4><p>I wrote a post a while back about the <a href="http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/01/dating-phylogenetic-trees-of-fossils.html">problem of dating phylogenetic trees of fossil taxa</a>. I subsequently wrote <a href="http://www.graemetlloyd.com/methdpf.html">code</a> to do it in <a href="http://cran.r-project.org/">R</a> and know a lot of people already use it. There are plans to include this with some other functions in a full-fledged library - watch this space.</p><h4>4. Palaeo-polygon area</h4><p>I have also written some <a href="http://www.graemetlloyd.com/methspa.html">code</a> to measure the area of the polygon described by the convex hull of a bunch of palaeolatitude and longitudes (now available as a downloadable field in the <a href="http://paleodb.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl">PaleoDB</a>). Again, this was prompted by <a href="http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-big-is-your-species-area-polygon.html">an old post</a>. However, it should be noted that there are issues with this function. I now have it working better, but have yet to update the page (email me if you're desperately interested and I'll give you the latest one).</p><h4>5. Red Queen PDF</h4><p>On a trip to Chicago where I interviewed for their PhD program I was able to get my hands on Leigh Van Valen's ridiculously well cited, but poorly read <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen's_Hypothesis">Red Queen</a> paper. As I got asked for this a lot I ended up scanning it in and making an <a href="http://www.graemetlloyd.com/lib.html">OCR'd PDF</a> and have made this available (with permission).</p><h4>6. Endnote libraries for edited volumes</h4><p>Being of a macroevolutionary bent I have a large personal library and spent a good chunk of my PhD entering everything into Endnote. Services like WoK were great for entering my journal runs of Palaeontology and JVP (I could just download everything from between a starting year to present), but no such electronic resource exists for my several edited books. These I had to enter manually, at no little effort. It seemed prudent then, to make these freely available once I was done and so you can browse and download copies from <a href="http://www.graemetlloyd.com/lib.html">this page</a>. I ended up using BibTeX for my thesis in the end and so hope to one day add this format too. I have also added links to these volumes on Amazon (if you buy via this link I get money!) and a bookfinder search (which will usually be cheaper, probably why I haven't made any yet).</p><p>Well, that's it for now. Hopefully some of you find at least one of these things useful. It is gratifying to me to know people are using it so please let me know if you like it or if there is anything else you'd like to have. After all, blogs are supposed to be interactive, right?</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2010/07/open-source-doing-my-bit.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-8666919744844450623Wed, 12 May 2010 13:34:00 +00002010-05-12T13:35:06.613+00:00Iron Sky Trailer<p>Looks set to be the best Nazi sci-fi comedy of all time....:</p><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4KEueJnsu80&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4KEueJnsu80&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2010/05/iron-sky-trailer.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-4458587009716919607Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:23:00 +00002010-01-18T13:41:59.174+00:00A meme of one's own<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/S1RhBFKyQqI/AAAAAAAAAJI/_Df22dH6JZI/s1600-h/Tag+Cloud+oF+iTunes+song+names.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 242px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/S1RhBFKyQqI/AAAAAAAAAJI/_Df22dH6JZI/s400/Tag+Cloud+oF+iTunes+song+names.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428070122083467938" border="1" /></a><p>Memes have to start somewhere, so I though I'd have a go at one. The image above is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud">tag cloud</a> of the song titles in my iTunes library. Of course a meme only works if other people follow suit, so here's how I did it:</p><p>1. Fire up your iTunes (or equivalent) and select all your songs and hit Ctrl+C.<br />2. Open up Excel (or equivalent) and hit Ctrl+V. On most OS's this should just paste your library in text form, with separate columns for song title, artist etc.<br />3. Select just the song title column and hit Ctrl+C.<br />4. Point your browser at <a href="http://tagcrowd.com/">Tag Crowd</a> and paste into the "Paste text to be visualized" box.<br />5. Click "Visualize!"<br />6. Screenshot the results and post them to your blog.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2010/01/meme-of-ones-own.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-4137955222490394551Sat, 02 Jan 2010 11:41:00 +00002010-07-18T11:51:04.092+00:00Stuff I'm totally going to do in 2010<p>I'm not much into New Years resolutions, but there are a few things I hope to do this year, apart from the usual publishing papers and writing grants. In essence these are about digitisation and downsizing.</p><p><b>1) Digitising my DVD collection</b><br>Towards the end of last year I purchased a nifty 1-terabyte external hard disk and I've since been ripping my DVD collection onto it using the excellent <a href="http://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</a>. Most other rippers are actually two programs, but this is really easy to use and does the whole thing for you (with plenty of options for customising the output). I've even set up a <a href="http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/">separate iTunes library</a> just for this purpose so I can have all the nice DVD covers and everything, but my music remains on my laptop. (There is a trick on the Mac when you load iTunes by holding down alt first that allows you to pick which library you load.) Currently I'm about half way through the ripping, but there are still lots of covers to scan.</p><p><b>2) The great paper reduction</b><br>My second, much bigger project, is to try and digitise my entire academic library so that I can take more stuff with me on my (fingers crossed) next post-doc. Being a macroevolutionary type my library is quite large and runs to several feet of books and tens of boxfiles. Again, I have already started this, purchasing a nice Epson multi-purpose device that includes a paper feed scanner allowing automated scanning of multiple pages, so less work in creating the initial digital files for the ones I can't just download a PDF for. I then tend to clean these up in Photoshop, usually by ramping up the contrast so OCR is easier, as well as rotating them so the text is nice and straight and cropping any black edges. Initially each file (usually one or two pages) is saved as it's actual page number(s) in the paper (so I can quickly see if any are missing) and each paper is a separate folder. I then combine them into a nice PDF using Acrobat Pro, OCR it for text recognition and then optimise it for a smaller file size. I have PDFs for several boxfiles already, but what I really want to do is link these up to my Endnote library before discarding the original, in a recycling bin of course. Not sure I'll complete this in a year, but hopefully I will be able to clear some space from under my desk where I keep the boxfiles that I have no shelf space for.</p><p><b>3) Selling stuff</b><br>During my years at Bristol I managed to acquire far too much stuff - I took one carload to Bristol and two van loads out. I have had to downsize to some degree already in my move to London, but there is still a lot of superfluous stuff in my room that I really need to get rid of, either by selling or giving it away. I haven't been ruthless enough in my life so far in getting rid of things I don't use anymore, but hopefully I can finish 2010 with just the things I really need or love.</p><p><b>4) Getting back into running</b><br>Just before my PhD I ran the Bristol half marathon and enjoyed it. Since then I haven't really done any running at all, but I now really need the exercise and for a while now I have been thinking of doing the New York marathon, although this will likely have to wait until 2011 due to a clash with this year's GSA. The only way I'm going to get back into it though is if I sign up for another half marathon as I need the incentive to get training again and it looks like I might be going in for the Budapest half marathon in September.</p><p><b>5) Bookmark liberation</b><br>In my <a href="http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-2009.html">end of year review</a> I mentioned that I am now getting into reading in a big way, but there are still several books on my shelves that I started reading, but for whatever reason stopped. It is my hope that I can finish these off over the space of the next 12 months, and indeed more generally reach a point where I have actually read all the books I own (with the exception of things like reference books and the like).</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2010/01/stuff-im-totally-going-to-do-in-2010.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-8451225182969311794Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:25:00 +00002009-12-28T16:16:34.651+00:00My 2009<p>Because I'm so awesome I'm sure you'll all be fascinated to read a recap of stuff I did in 2009.</p><p><b>1) Leaving Bristol</b><br>I moved to Bristol in September 2002 and lived there until March 2009, a huge chunk of my adult life. During that time I completed my Masters and my PhD, but most of all it was where I made pretty much all of the closest friends I've ever had and it was certainly a bit of a wrench to leave.</p><p><b>2) Moving to Nodnol</b><br>The reason for my leaving was to take up my first post-doctoral position as a research assistant at the <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/">Natural History Museum</a>. I was initially hesitant about returning to London, the city where I spent my (much less happy) undergraduate years, but I found somewhere quiet and pleasant to live and the project I'm working on is really great and ought to lead to lots of quality publications.</p><p><b>3) US Road Trip</b><br> Although one of the joys of palaeontology has to be the traveling I hadn't been on what I would consider a "proper" holiday since before my PhD so I spent most of the year looking forward to a US road trip with <a href="http://jdorcutt.blogspot.com/">John</a> and Phil. Our starting point was <a href="http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-i-did-at-napc.html">NAPC 2009</a> in Cincinnati, Ohio, our goal: Seattle, Washington. A good 2,500 miles away. I certainly enjoyed myself and as we never came to blows hopefully my traveling companions did too. We managed to take in <a href="http://ashfall.unl.edu/">Ashfalls</a>, <a href="http://www.nps.gov/badl/index.htm">The Badlands</a>, <a href="http://www.deadwood.org/">Deadwood</a>, <a href="http://www.nps.gov/moru/index.htm">Rushmore</a>, <a href="http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10514">Dinosaur Park</a>, <a href="http://www.sdgfp.info/parks/Regions/Custer/Index.htm">Custer State Park</a>, <a href="http://www.bighornmountains.com/">The Bighorn Mountains</a>, <a href="http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm">Yellowstone</a> and even <a href="http://www.cicelyalaska.com/">Cicely, Alaska</a> clocking up some 3,000 miles along the way. We got to Seattle in under 8 days, just in time for the Independence day fireworks and a whistle stop tour of the city. It was slightly depressing to then fly back across the same expanse in just a few hours.</p><p><b>4) Reading</b><br>This was the year I discovered the trick to getting through books more quickly: spend more time reading. This was prompted by a couple of things. Firstly I am now a commuter again after four and a half years of walking to work I now get the tube and hence can read on the way to and from work. Secondly I finally read Harry Potter after seeing the sixth film convinced me it would be worth it. I ordered the paperback box set and plowed my way through them in enough time to go and see the film again before it came off release. I certainly enjoyed them and the process got me back into reading novels and I now read more than ever. A quick scan of my book shelf shows that I managed to finish a minimum of 24 books this year, pretty good for me!</p><p><b>5) Lego advent calendar</b><br>December has been all about my Lego advent calendar and I've decided I just don't care anymore if they are supposed to be for kids. Lego is awesome, end of.</p><p><b>6) Footy</b><br>Although Liverpool turned out not to claim the Premiership I did manage to make it back-to-back wins in the fantasy football. However this season isn't going well on either front. I did manage to see another live game, but this turned out to contain the now infamous <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8308907.stm">beachball incident</a>. I didn't even get to see this goal as the queue to get in meant I couldn't see the pitch until about 10 minutes in. I'm going off football...</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-2009.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-4141493355386606463Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:07:00 +00002009-12-23T15:23:39.146+00:00Even more distilled procrastination - animal links<p>Some more links for your delectation.</p><p>It seems that <a href="http://www.onlysuper.com/index.php/2009/08/25/super-dogs-creatively-groomed-to-look-like-animals/">dog torture</a> is <a href="http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/curiosities/2009/whydogsbitepeople.htm">doubly popular</a>, as is that traditional pastime of <a href="http://www.wegif.com/gifs/luciana/131677/">cat-waking</a>. (Although I prefer cat buckaroo.) If you want a guaranteed smile then I recommend <a href="http://i38.tinypic.com/25aopzn.jpg">this</a>. I have no idea what could have inspired <a href="http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9397/amt02.jpg">this</a>, but it is just a little bit brilliant.</p><p>I recently finished <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Carnivorous-Nights-Trail-Tasmanian-Tiger/dp/1841957437/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1253191941&amp;sr=8-1">this book</a> about the sadly extinct Thylacine and was directed towards this <a href="http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/films/motion_film_footage.htm">collection of the only surviving footage</a> of the animal in life. I really liked <a href="http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/Photography/Images/POD/s/silverback-gorillas-072309-xl.jpg">this</a> gorilla photo and found this <a href="http://www.thisblogrules.com/2009/08/meet-crested-auklet-small-seabird-with.html">bird's appearance</a> amusing.</p><p><a href="http://exilelifestyle.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/starfish.jpg">This</a> appealed to my sense of humour, reminds me a bit of the "Matt Damon" bit in Team America. Finally, didn't someone once say you can judge a nation by the way they <a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/news/dog_humiliated_in_front_of_entire">treat their animals</a>?</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/12/even-more-distilled-procrastination.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-58997612719548759Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:41:00 +00002009-12-27T23:13:02.507+00:00More distilled procrastination<p>Whilst I wait for some code to run I thought I'd post a little update with some book- and dinosaur-based links partly cannibalised from my stupidly long post. Enjoy, and Happy Christmas!</p><h4>Dinosaurs</h4><p>In my limited experience of being interviewed as a "dinosaur expert" I am always asked what my favourite dinosaur is and in all honesty it is still <em>T. rex</em> if for no other reason than our arms are the same length. Not <a href="http://www.mordantorange.com/mo/?p=429">one</a>, but <a href="http://truckbearingkibble.com/images/comic/01-28-08.jpg">two</a> cartoons make use of this fact to humorous effect. Presumably this is the <a href="http://img1.visualizeus.com/thumbs/09/10/04/lolz-6651f4156d1a8c52640972f2632a9024_h.jpg">creationist version of dinosaur extinction</a>. Although <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200512/df20051216.jpg">this</a> is more season-appropriate. Alternatively <a href="http://www.geekologie.com/2009/12/15/poor-dinos.jpg">this</a> cartoon has an eye on the bigger picture, whereas <a href="http://sale.images.woot.com/Some_Motivation_Requiredu2sDetail.png">this</a> is just silly.</p><h4>Bibliophilia</h4><p>I do enjoy these lists of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Most_Influential_Books_Ever_Written">books none of us has read most of</a> and found these, what I can only describe as, <a href="http://www.deannamolinaro.com/Stuff_That_I_Made/Books/BookTitles.html">children's books for adults</a> kind of intriguing. I also shamelessly indulged in this <a href="http://curiousexpeditions.org/?p=78">hefty collection of library porn</a>, have now discovered <a href="http://www.crookedbrains.net/2008/05/interesting_30.html">bookstore porn</a> and even <a href="http://deputy-dog.com/2009/07/ceiling-porn.html">ceiling porn</a>. (OK, the latter isn't book-related, but it fits here better than most places.) I found this incredibly useful blog on <a href="http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/">awful library books</a> as well as <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Community/Featured/found-in-books.shtml">this interesting list</a> of things found in second hand books.</p><p>I keep finding really cool t-shirt sites, but unfortunately they are pretty much all US-based, like <a href="http://www.overduemedia.com/store.aspx?cat=shirts">this</a> collection. Other bibliophiles may also appreciate <a href="http://wondermark.com/comics/442.gif">this</a>, <a href="http://cdn.fotocommunity.com/Architektur-Bauwesen/Profanbauten/Buecherkubus-a18872702.jpg">this</a>, <a href="http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/6580/sbooks2386da3sl1.jpg">this</a> and <a href="http://imgfave.lg1x8.simplecdn.net/image_cache/1245863237749174.jpeg">this</a>.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-distilled-procrastination.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-1735281704072201004Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:52:00 +00002010-01-20T10:13:58.800+00:00First Lines<p><b>OK, I've added a clue to the last one</b></p><p>I haven't done a meme since my <a href="http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2007/03/ten-wierd-things-about-me.html">first post</a> so thought I'd try this one stolen from <a href="http://silveronthetree.livejournal.com/">A little bit of babbling about nothing</a>. Basically the idea is I pick ten of my favourite books or series and then copy out the first lines. Then you (dear reader) can make guesses as to what they are. I suspect my readership will have encountered many of these before so no googling and away you go.</p><ol><li>Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita. <em>Dante's Inferno, guessed by <a href="http://3lbmonkeybrain.blogspot.com/">Mike</a></em><li>The late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering. <em>Jurassic Park (I couldn't resist), guessed by <a href="http://3lbmonkeybrain.blogspot.com/">Mike</a></em><li>Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. <em>Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, guessed by <a href="http://silveronthetree.livejournal.com/">Sarah</a></em><li>Idle reader: Without my swearing to it, you can believe that I would like this book, the child of my understanding, to be the most beautiful, the most brilliant, and the most discreet that anyone could imagine. <b>[Clue: windmills]</b><li>On 24 May 1863, which was a Sunday, my uncle, Professor Lidenbrock, came rushing back towards his little house, No. 19 Konigstrasse, one of the oldest streets in the old quarter of Hamburg. <em>Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, guessed by Carlos</em><li>They put the behemoths in the hold along with the rhinos, the hippos and the elephants. <em>A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters, guessed by <a href="http://fishfeet2007.blogspot.com/">Sarda</a></em><li>It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying in the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. <em>The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night, guessed by <a href="http://silveronthetree.livejournal.com/">Sarah</a></em><li>It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days. <em>Remains Of The Day, guessed by <a href="http://silveronthetree.livejournal.com/">Sarah</a> (covertly) and Jenny (via Facebook)</em><li>The escalator strained slowly upward. In an old station like this what else would you expect? <em>Night Watch, guessed by <a href="http://rachisaurus.blogspot.com/">Rachel</a></em><li>You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of <em>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer</em>, but that ain't no matter. <em>Huck Finn (OK, major clue in this one, but not as easy as the opening line from Lolita I almost included), guessed by <a href="http://silveronthetree.livejournal.com/">Sarah</a></em></ol><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/12/first-lines.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-1410902479445494393Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:09:00 +00002009-12-18T08:49:38.611+00:00Just some webcomic links<p>Ages ago I started preparing another post of stuff I found on Stumbleupon, but it got ludicrously large and unwieldy so I've broken it up instead. These are some of the webcomics that I find amusing/interesting/thought provoking etc. Enjoy!:</p><p><ul><li><b>This little piggy went into,</b> um, well <a href="http://www.fecalface.com/news/upload/2007/03/pig/pig_up.html">see for yourself</a> (not exactly a comic).<li><b>I mostly don't get <a href="http://www.warehousecomic.com">The Warehouse</a></b> but <a href="http://www.warehousecomic.com/comic_241.php">this</a> really appeals to my - no doubt autistic - sense of humour.<li><b>Apparently only men</b> can <a href="http://www.darkandpink.com/comics/20080325.gif">be sexist</a>. Ok, it's silly, but it amused me.<li><b>The undisputed champion of the webcomic</b> (at least for geeks like me) has to be <a href="http://xkcd.com/">xkcd</a> and <a href="http://cu.nniling.us/197/">this</a> is just one of the many that I have enjoyed. (Brings back fond memories of childhood when I built my own sewer out of cardboard and toilet roll tubes for my figures to play in.)<li><b>I have always felt</b> that marking off the days since the moment of birth is a somewhat arbitrary measure of a lifespan and <a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/woodpecker.png">this</a> somewhat encapsulates this.<li><b>Two great novels on dystopian</b> futures battle it out in <a href="http://fatpita.net/images/image%20%281952%29.jpg">this</a> really thought provoking comparison between Orwell and Huxley. I am yet to read 1984, but it looks like I've read the more terrifying one.<li><b>Not exactly a comic</b>, but a pretty accurate description of <a href="http://www.sonnyradio.com/meetings.jpg">meetings</a>.<li><b>Ever wondered what the <a href="http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/eye_doctor.PNG">truth</b> about opticians</a> is?<li><b>Another one from xkcd</b>, I admit it took a bit of thinking for me to get <a href="http://xkcd.com/552/">this</a>. Definitely one for the statisticians amongst you.<li><b>I enjoyed <a href="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/beyond_the_beyond/2009/07/020709.jpg">this</a> lampooning</b> of a certain magazine. Some of the covers are just priceless.<li><b>Here is a perfect retort</b> to the <a href="http://jsayers.com/thingpart/thingpart198.html">kid who wants to grow up too soon</a>.<li><b>I always like scientific jokes</b> such as <a href="http://abstrusegoose.com/a/186.htm">this</a> entomological one.<li><b>I had to finish</b> with one from my favourite comic of all time: Calvin and Hobbes. No doubt my readers will already be familiar with it, but it will always be worth revisiting and <a href="http://img102.imageshack.us/img102/8143/chtw1.gif">this strip</a> perfectly encapsulates the thoughtful, funny and beautiful nature of Bill Watterson's work. Warning: it may bring a tear to your eye.</ul></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/11/just-some-webcomic-links.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-4379088713831136931Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:23:00 +00002009-09-01T16:53:56.237+00:00You can tell I was going to be a palaeontologist...<p>Something from my misspent youth this time. As kids my siblings and myself hit upon the great idea of producing a calendar as a Christmas present for our grandparents, quite probably because it was cheap. Basically we decided on a theme and then got drawing (in pencil first, then inking in later so that our dad could photocopy it at work). I suspect I had a pretty big hand in picking the 1994 theme (see below), the fact that <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/">Jurassic Park</a> came out in 1993 was surely a coincidence. Anyway, as this resurfaced recently I thought I'd scan it in and post it here for posterity.</p><p align="center"><b>The front cover</b> Pretty sure I've just copied these from JP merchandise:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LhP1-l1I/AAAAAAAAAI8/Stf0Oq4PHpw/s1600-h/img018.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LhP1-l1I/AAAAAAAAAI8/Stf0Oq4PHpw/s400/img018.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376536564710938450" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>January</b> Pfft! This is clearly a <em>Deinonychus</em>...:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LeTrmnsI/AAAAAAAAAI0/qYWUy35KREo/s1600-h/img019.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 284px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LeTrmnsI/AAAAAAAAAI0/qYWUy35KREo/s400/img019.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376536514201558722" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>February</b> We even ripped off the JP typeface for the months:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LaUXS8tI/AAAAAAAAAIs/4RdLjkEXXWI/s1600-h/img020.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 284px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LaUXS8tI/AAAAAAAAAIs/4RdLjkEXXWI/s400/img020.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376536445665342162" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>March</b> An interesting mutant:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LM5c20dI/AAAAAAAAAIk/2eDH2MdG4BQ/s1600-h/img021.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LM5c20dI/AAAAAAAAAIk/2eDH2MdG4BQ/s400/img021.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376536215102607826" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>April</b> Proof that randomly including <em>Dimetrodon</em> in dinosaur books does confuse kids:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LJ_50ExI/AAAAAAAAAIc/yIhfHdm5A_w/s1600-h/img022.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 292px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LJ_50ExI/AAAAAAAAAIc/yIhfHdm5A_w/s400/img022.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376536165295067922" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>May</b> Apparently Toyota landcruisers were always associated with dinosaurs...:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LGijkF4I/AAAAAAAAAIU/1KbQWmVAfgU/s1600-h/img023.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 290px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LGijkF4I/AAAAAAAAAIU/1KbQWmVAfgU/s400/img023.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376536105877510018" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>June</b> Obviously I didn't have great editorial control:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LDTISzhI/AAAAAAAAAIM/kn05zU3O_6U/s1600-h/img024.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 290px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1LDTISzhI/AAAAAAAAAIM/kn05zU3O_6U/s400/img024.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376536050196991506" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>July</b> Well it is <em>the</em> party month:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1K-SJ3xeI/AAAAAAAAAIE/IlpfHHpFaD8/s1600-h/img025.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 289px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1K-SJ3xeI/AAAAAAAAAIE/IlpfHHpFaD8/s400/img025.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376535964035827170" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>August</b> Here we erect a new species:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1K1lw1nlI/AAAAAAAAAH8/40Ta4L42r5g/s1600-h/img026.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 260px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1K1lw1nlI/AAAAAAAAAH8/40Ta4L42r5g/s400/img026.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376535814680714834" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>September</b> A reconstruction worthy of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Waterhouse_Hawkins">Waterhouse</a>:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1KyG6H6uI/AAAAAAAAAH0/YK84Pk4ZsHM/s1600-h/img027.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1KyG6H6uI/AAAAAAAAAH0/YK84Pk4ZsHM/s400/img027.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376535754858556130" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>October</b> Are those feathers?:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1KuvVcAfI/AAAAAAAAAHs/z9ASdo7ojbA/s1600-h/img028.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 293px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1KuvVcAfI/AAAAAAAAAHs/z9ASdo7ojbA/s400/img028.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376535696991060466" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>November</b> Nice to see our notes section got used:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1KmBoa-AI/AAAAAAAAAHk/6ROrTA6jqgs/s1600-h/img029.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1KmBoa-AI/AAAAAAAAAHk/6ROrTA6jqgs/s400/img029.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376535547283699714" /></a></p><p align="center"><b>December</b> It's all been building up to this:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1KhJLg5zI/AAAAAAAAAHc/R6JjeMf46TY/s1600-h/img030.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 292px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/Sp1KhJLg5zI/AAAAAAAAAHc/R6JjeMf46TY/s400/img030.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376535463410591538" /></a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/09/you-can-tell-i-was-going-to-be.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-4433583096051312912Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:49:00 +00002009-08-25T14:58:53.390+00:00Changing the size and colour of placemarks in Google Earth<p>In follow up to my previous post I have now found out how to change the size and colour of my placemarks. The trick here is to create a "style" of placemark right at the top of the file. Again, this is pretty simple when you get down to it. This time you need to post a little bit of code at the top of the file, just after the &lt;Document&gt; tag:</p><pre>&lt;Style id="normalPlacemark"&gt;<br> &lt;IconStyle&gt;<br> &lt;color&gt;ffffff00&lt;/color&gt;<br> &lt;scale&gt;5&lt;/scale&gt;<br> &lt;/IconStyle&gt;<br>&lt;/Style&gt;</pre><p>The id part of the opening &lt;style&gt; tag is important as it gives each style a name that we can then refer to later for each individual placemark. This allows the user to create different styles of placemark that can be used together in the same file (rather like CSS does for HTML). Colour (&lt;color&gt;) and size (&lt;scale&gt;) are then defined as elements of the &lt;IconStyle&gt; tag. Colours are in a hexadecimal format:<br><br><em>The range of values for any one color is 0 to 255 (00 to ff). For alpha, 00 is fully transparent and ff is fully opaque. The order of expression is aabbggrr, where aa=alpha (00 to ff); bb=blue (00 to ff); gg=green (00 to ff); rr=red (00 to ff). For example, if you want to apply a blue color with 50 percent opacity to an overlay, you would specify the following: <color>7fff0000</color>, where alpha=0x7f, blue=0xff, green=0x00, and red=0x00.</em><br><br>Whereas scale is just a number.</p><p>Now we just need to make an addition to our &lt;placemark&gt; tag to state that we want to use this style:</p><pre>&lt;Placemark&gt;<br> &lt;name&gt;110_671B&lt;/name&gt;<br> &lt;styleUrl&gt;#normalPlacemark&lt;/styleUrl&gt;<br> &lt;Point&gt;<br> &lt;coordinates&gt;-58.73,15.52,-1622&lt;/coordinates&gt;<br> &lt;/Point&gt;<br>&lt;/Placemark&gt;</pre><p>So now I am able to plot my holes as giant green pushpins:</p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/SpPydh_fI_I/AAAAAAAAAHU/doIRYZvunjg/s1600-h/colsize.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 275px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/SpPydh_fI_I/AAAAAAAAAHU/doIRYZvunjg/s400/colsize.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373905369537913842" /></a><p>Unfortunately it is not easy to modify the colours of the pushpin icon as it has a yellow overlay to it and I have yet to work out if there is an easier way to colour placemarks exactly as I want. This will have to wait until next time.</p><hr><p>Update:</p><p>OK, this last bit has been solved by someone who asked to be referred to as "my clever volcanologist friend." Basically a white pushpin needs to be called in the &lt;style&gt; tag like this:</p><pre>&lt;Style id="normalPlacemark"&gt;<br> &lt;IconStyle&gt;<br> &lt;color&gt;ffffff00&lt;/color&gt;<br> &lt;scale&gt;5&lt;/scale&gt;<br> &lt;Icon&gt;<br> &lt;href&gt;http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/pushpin/wht-pushpin.png&lt;/href&gt;<br> &lt;/Icon&gt;<br> &lt;/IconStyle&gt;<br>&lt;/Style&gt;</pre><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/08/changing-size-and-colour-of-placemarks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-4032084283378294287Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:47:00 +00002009-08-21T17:16:39.157+00:00Multiple placemarks in Google Earth<p>In my current job I am producing a database of fossil occurrences from the North Atlantic deep sea record and one of the fields in the data base is latitude-longitude for each of the <a href="http://www.iodp.org/">IODP</a> holes included. For a while now I've been wanting to export this data to a <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/">KML</a> file (Google Earth's HTML-like file format). At first I figured this would be easy. I created an SQL query in Access to get my data out as a comma-delimited file which I then import into <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">R</a>. All I need to do is create a table of unique lat-long occurrences (holes) and their names then format them in the KML-style. However, I came up against a bit of a snag.</p><p>The first part is easy. Just set the header of the file to:</p><pre>&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot; encoding=&quot;UTF-8&quot;?&gt;<br>&lt;kml xmlns=&quot;http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2&quot;&gt;</pre><p>The footer to:</p><pre>&lt;/kml&gt;</pre><p>Then each hole is entered as a <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kml_tut.html#placemarks">Placemark</a> using the following syntax:</p><pre> &lt;Placemark&gt;<br> &lt;name&gt;Hole name&lt;/name&gt;<br> &lt;Point&gt;<br> &lt;coordinates&gt;-122.0822035425683,37.42228990140251,0&lt;/coordinates&gt;<br> &lt;/Point&gt;<br> &lt;/Placemark&gt;</pre><p>Where the coordinates are longitude, latitude and altitude respectively.<p><p>Simple.</p><p>But once you import the whole file into Google Earth it only shows the first point (hole) and skips all the others. Google's own code site wasn't much use on this, and the few forum's I looked at seemed to be missing a proper answer to this problem. In the end I figured out that all that needs to be done is wrap the placemarks in a simple</p> <pre>&lt;Document&gt;&lt;/Document&gt;</pre><p>tag.</p><p>Lesson learned, and shared.</p><p>(Image and original code below.)</p><br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/So7T4Yt38bI/AAAAAAAAAHM/CFPSm7NtJIE/s1600-h/Myholes.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 275px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/So7T4Yt38bI/AAAAAAAAAHM/CFPSm7NtJIE/s400/Myholes.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372464371160576434" /></a><pre>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;<br />&lt;kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2"&gt;<br />&lt;Document&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;110_671B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-58.73,15.52,-1622&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;110_672A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-58.6,15.5,-1581&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;110_673B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-58.64,15.53,-1875&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;110_674A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-58.9,15.5,-2003&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;110_676A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-58.7,15.53,-1494&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;149_897A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-12.47,40.83,-5320&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;149_899B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-12.26,40.77,-5291&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;149_900A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-11.6,40.68,-5037&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;149_901A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-11.05,40.67,-4719&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;152_914A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-39.72,63.46,-533&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;152_919A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-37.46,62.67,-2088&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;157_950A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-25.6,31.15,-5438&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;157_951A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-24.87,32.03,-5437&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;157_952A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-24.5,30.79,-5432&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;159_959A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-2.73,3.62,-2091&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;159_960A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-2.73,3.58,-2048&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;159_961A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-3.05,3.44,-3292&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;159_962B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-3.18,3.25,-4637&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;160_966F&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;32.7,33.79,-923&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;101_627B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-78.29,27.63,-1026&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;160_967E&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;32.72,34.06,-2553&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;160_969B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;24.88,33.84,-2202&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;164_994C&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-75.54,31.78,-2799&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;165_998A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-82.93,19.48,-3180&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;101_628A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-78.3,27.5,-964&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;105_646B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-48.36,58.2,-3106&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;101_635B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-77.3,25.4,-3081&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;103_637A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-12.9,42.1,-1243&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;101_626C&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-79.54,25.6,-844&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;149_898A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-12.12,40.68,-5279&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;103_638B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-12.19,42.15,-1890&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;103_639A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-12.24,42.14,-1829&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;103_640A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-12.5,42,-1363&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;103_641A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-12.18,42.15,-1918&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;104_642B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;2.92,67.22,-1283&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;104_643A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;1,67.7,-2769&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;104_644A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;4.57,66.67,-1215&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;107_651A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;12.8,40.2,-2974&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;107_652A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;12.1,40.4,-3094&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;107_653A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;11.44,40.26,-2821&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;107_654A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;10.7,40.6,-2209&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;107_655A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;12.46,40.17,-3234&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_657A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-20.94,21.33,-2332&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_658A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-18.58,20.74,-2264&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_659B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-21.02,18.07,-3073&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_660A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-19.24,10.01,-2221&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_661A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-19.38,9.44,-2541&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_662A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-11.73,-1.39,-2740&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_663A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-11.87,-1.19,-2856&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_664B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-23.22,0.1,-2747&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_665A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-19.66,2.95,-1813&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_666A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-20.2,3.5,-2037&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_667A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-21.91,4.56,-3029&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_668A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-20.92,4.76,-2690&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;108_668B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-20.9,4.8,-2693&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;174A_1071A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-72.72,39.38,-88&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;174A_1072A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-72.69,39.36,-98&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;174A_1073A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-72.27,39.22,-639&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;1_1&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-92.18,25.85,-2827&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;1_2&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-92.05,23.04,-3572&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;1_3&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-92.04,23.03,-3747&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;1_4&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-73.79,24.47,-5319&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;1_5&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-73.64,24.72,-5354&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;1_6A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-67.64,30.83,-5124&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;1_7&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-68.29,30.13,-5182&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;4_25&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-39.24,-0.51,-1916&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;4_26A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-44.04,10.89,-5169&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;4_27&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-56.87,15.85,-5251&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;4_28&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-65.62,20.58,-5251&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;105_647A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-45.26,53.33,-2695&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;11_100&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-73.79,24.68,-5325&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;11_101A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-74.43,25.19,-4868&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;13_125&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;20.42,34.62,-2782&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;14_137&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-27.06,25.92,-5361&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;14_141&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-23.99,19.41,-4148&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;150_905A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-72.28,38.61,-2698&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;151_910A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;6.59,80.26,-556&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;151_911A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;8.22,80.47,-902&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;152_915A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-39.78,63.47,-533&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;152_918A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-38.63,63.09,-1869&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;38_338&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;5.38,67.78,-1297&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;39_354&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-44.19,5.89,-4045&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;41_367&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-20.04,12.48,-4748&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;41_370&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-10.77,32.83,-4214&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;44_390A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-76.11,30.14,-2665&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;47_398D&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-10.71,40.96,-3910&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;49_407&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-30.57,63.93,-2472&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;49_408&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-28.91,63.37,-1624&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;49_410&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-29.47,45.5,-2975&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;76_534A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-75.38,28.34,-4971&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;77_537&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-85.46,23.93,-3123&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> 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&lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;173_1067A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-11.59,40.68,-5021&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;2_8A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-67.55,35.38,-5184&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;2_9&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-59.19,32.77,-4973&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;2_10&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-52.21,32.86,-4712&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;2_11&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-44.74,29.94,-3571&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;2_12C&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-26,19.69,-4557&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> 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&lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;151_909A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;3.07,78.58,-2519&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;151_912A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;5.45,79.95,-1037&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;151_913A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;6.94,75.48,-3319&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;152_916A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-39.8,63.48,-514&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;154_925A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-43.48,4.2,-3042&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;154_929E&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-43.74,5.97,-4356&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;157_953A&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-15.14,28.65,-3578&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br /> &lt;Placemark&gt;&lt;name&gt;157_954B&lt;/name&gt;&lt;Point&gt;&lt;coordinates&gt;-15.53,28.43,-3485&lt;/coordinates&gt;&lt;/Point&gt;&lt;/Placemark&gt;<br />&lt;/Document&gt;<br />&lt;/kml&gt;</pre><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/08/multiple-placemarks-in-google-earth.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-8427313939314422702Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:05:00 +00002009-08-05T16:43:41.912+00:00For your procrastinating pleasure<p>Here's what I've been wasting my internet time on this past few weeks.</p><h4>Photography</h4><p>I've always wanted to know <a href="http://www.photographycorner.com/blog/2009/07/how-to-photograph-fireworks">how to photograph fireworks</a>, especially when you can get results like this <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3653/3691332156_e5fc60eee7_b.jpg">awesome picture</a>.</p><h4>Animals</h4><p>I tend to come across lots of dinosaur stuff, including useful pointers on why you really should <a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tyrannosaur_crack">keep your T. rex off crack</a>, a case of some <a href="http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20090602.gif">dinosaur revisionism</a> and this, frankly confusing, <a href="http://www.bustedtees.com/neverforget">t-shirt</a>. I also find this <a href="http://www.animalshaveproblemstoo.com/pics/216.gif">simple joke</a> quite amusing.</p><h4>Entertainment</h4><p>If you haven't already come across it, I really like the idea of this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0">wedding entrance</a>. Some more creativity comes into play in a performance of 80's classic <a href="http://www.wimp.com/choirhands/">Africa</a> and finally there was this darkly comic animated feature, <a href="http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/billys_ballon_hertzfeldt/">Billy's balloon</a>. I also recommend checking out the art of <a href="http://www.peterhammond.com/web/index.php">this guy</a>.</p><h4>Science</h4><p>First up is this cool <a href="http://icantseeyou.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/07/the-airplane-toilet-paper-experiment.html">toilet paper experiment</a>. That nice chap Bill Gates has also purchased and made freely available these <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html">Richard Feynman lectures</a>. Then you can <a href="http://www.nakidness.com/images/funny/cartoons_drawings/make_friends_with_your_glands/">make friends with your glands</a>.</p><h4>Humour</h4><p>Despite being a throwback to the early part of the internet age animated gifs still seem to be going strong, my favourite being <a href="http://i43.tinypic.com/1zcn5mh.gif">this one</a>. One wonders what the elephant makes of it. I enjoyed several of these <a href="http://www.manofest.com/Content/the-10-funniest-workplace-training-videos-of-all-time.html">workplace training videos</a>. Ten is probably the funniest, number four is just wrong (who says such things?) and two is perhaps painfully true. However, I found this collection of <a href="http://www.bigstupididiot.com/2009/06/10-funniest-1950s-propaganda-films.html">1950's propaganda</a> to be more disturbing than funny. For those with a non-PC sense of humour this <a href="http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1910627">garage door opener</a> should appeal, although I much preferred the Wayne's World echoing twist to this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uwY3sjqYX0">fast food folk song</a>. Finally <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8qjdUXBexA">this</a> "remix" of an NWA classic is just awesome.</p><h4>Geekdom</h4><p>One of the joys of this internet age is that the powerbase of the world is shifting ever more towards the geeks of this world. I found this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aszl5avDtek">short talk</a> by the guy who brought you captcha (you'll know what it is when you see it) to be really interesting. Although this vision of the <a href="http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/9703/image001rbr.jpg">future of dating</a> may be less encouraging. Finally, <a href="http://9gag.com/photo/10090_full.jpg">this</a> really appealed to my sense of humour.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/08/for-your-procrastinating-pleasure.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-42381913069331462Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:59:00 +00002009-07-08T09:00:34.775+00:00What I did at NAPC<p><b>1) Wrote my talk at the last minute.</b><br>Always a great idea. It's not like I ran over and had to be booted off stage. Worst of all I realised later that I must have been completely oblivious to my two-minute warning. Still, apparently it came across OK.</p><p><b>2) Saw some of my heroes speak.</b><br>Including <a href="http://bms.brown.edu/faculty/m/kmiller/">Ken Miller</a> and <a href="http://seanbcarroll.com/">Sean Carroll</a>, both of whose popular science books I have read as well as <a href="http://www.phylodiversity.net/donoghue/people/michael.html">Michael Donoghue</a> (whose contributions to evolution have been truly diverse), <a href="http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/asp/GG/people/people.asp?ID=3225">Steven Stanley</a> (father of macroevolution) and <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gingeric/">Phil Gingerich</a> (of fractal rates of evolution fame) - all legends.</p><p><b>3) Became addicted to <a href="http://www.ehow.com/how_2187666_play-bar-shuffle-board.html">shuffleboard</a>.</b><br>A bit like a dry version of curling, but without the brushes. I exclusively play the doubles version and it turns out I have a penchant for the violent 'kamikaze'-type shots.</p><p><b>4) Got my ass whupped at basketball.</b><br>It seemed like such a good idea. I mean, how good can a bunch of palaeontologists be at sport? Weren't we all the geeks at school who hated physical education? Anyway, I entered myself and a couple of friends in the 3-on-3 tournament under the name "The Bristol Deciders" (retrospectively the Chickencows would have been better). It seemed victory would be ours when at one stage we were the only team to enter, but as it turned out there was one other - not enough for a tournament. Instead we played a pick up game with such luminaries as <a href="http://www.uc.edu/geology/profile_details.aspx?ePID=ODA2Mw%3D%3D&username=millerai">Arnie Miller</a>, <a href="http://geosci.uchicago.edu/people/foote.shtml">Mike Foote</a>, <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tomaszb/">Tom Baumiller</a> and <a href="http://www.geology.wisc.edu/people/display.html?id=665">Shanan Peters</a> involved. It's safe to say against the average American I am atrocious at basketball.</p><p><b>5) Visited the Creation Museum.</b><br>This was a truly bizarre experience. Some 80 palaeontologists, including Arnie Miller, Mike Foote, Christine Janis and myself boarded a couple of school buses for the short drive into Kentucky. I got photographed by the Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron something-or-other and the New York Times. In the end the story made both the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/science/30muse.html?_r=1">New York Times</a> and <a href="http://www.bucyrustelegraphforum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200990625007">Bucyrus Telegraph Forum</a>, but the highlight has to be the back of my head appearing in <a href="">this</a> article, justifying my claim to be the back of the head of palaeontology. It's a shame I'd already gotten my business cards done.</p><p><b>6) Enjoyed a mini PBDB summer course reunion.</b><br>It was the first time I had seen three folks from the PBDB summer course in two years and we even squeezed in a reunion photo. All of our instructors were also at the conference and it was good to see them again (and have them remember my name).</p><p><b>7) Learned how to play bocce ball.</b><br>Not as fun as shuffleboard, and Bristol taking on Berkeley ended disastrously. Still <a href="http://www.ehow.com/how_3109_play-bocce-ball.html">bocce ball</a> was good fun.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-i-did-at-napc.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-4193314821584446542Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:45:00 +00002009-06-15T15:57:17.462+00:00DinosaursHumorHumourBits and bobs<p>Here are a few more things I've found whilst <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com">stumbling</a>.</p><p align="center">From <a href="http://www.vivapixel.com/">http://www.vivapixel.com/</a>:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.vivapixel.com/media/4422800421/me_991_dino_ark.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 600px; height: 450px;" src="http://www.vivapixel.com/media/4422800421/me_991_dino_ark.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a></p><p align="center">From <a href="http://farleftside.com/">http://farleftside.com/</a>:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farleftside.com/2008/8-15-08.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 365px; height: 469px;" src="http://farleftside.com/2008/8-15-08.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a></p><p align="center">From <A href="http://www.birdandmoon.com/">http://www.birdandmoon.com/</a>:<br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.birdandmoon.com/rostuff/vulch44.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 415px; height: 823px;" src="http://www.birdandmoon.com/rostuff/vulch44.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.birdandmoon.com/birdandmoon/images/web-version.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 7413px;" src="http://www.birdandmoon.com/birdandmoon/images/web-version.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/06/bits-and-bobs.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-4784279515868712306Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:35:00 +00002009-06-07T10:42:01.940+00:00Dinosaur supertree - now zoomable!<p>I just got an email from <a href="http://spot.colorado.edu/~klym/">Mike Klymkowsky</a> with a link to an online, zoomable version of the <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1650/2483">dinosaur supertree</a>. A preview is shown below. To see the site yourself click <a href="http://spot.colorado.edu/~klym/Tree.html">here</a> (the link to the dinosaur tree is on the left hand bar). It's cool to see other people making use of it, especially as we couldn't fit this figure into the actual paper.</p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/SiuYBVtG8-I/AAAAAAAAAGs/618amJgDklU/s1600-h/dinost.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 399px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_z7-vhCWfk-w/SiuYBVtG8-I/AAAAAAAAAGs/618amJgDklU/s400/dinost.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5344532531578860514" /></a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/06/dinosaur-supertree-now-zoomable.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567196806175372342.post-6990542511869250229Mon, 25 May 2009 10:06:00 +00002009-05-28T09:34:11.002+00:00My Top 9 Tips For Fantasy Football<p>For a few years now I have been playing the official <a href="http://fantasy.premierleague.com/">Fantasy Premier League</a> game. Not only has this been a distraction from the heartache of watching Man United reach 18 league titles, but it is completely free and allows you to be entered in both a global competition as well as smaller leagues with friends. Having just won the latter for the second year in a row I thought I'd post some tips on what I think is the best strategy for success.<br><b>1) Make the best player your captain.</b> Even if they appear to cost the Earth picking the highest scoring player and making them your captain is key for the simple reason that the captain's points count twice. To save money here is a false economy as the doubling cancels out any expense. Of course the trick is actually picking the highest scoring player, but usually this is the best midfielder at a top four club, i.e. Fabregas, Gerrard, Lampard or Ronaldo. Choose wisely, however, as their great expense will make transferring them later tricky, e.g. if you want to 'upgrade' to a more expensive player you will often need to make two transfers, costing you gameweek points.<br><b>2) Fill the bench with the cheapest players.</b> Don't waste money on players that you will never use. Sure, it's great if you get injuries to have cover, but it is a false economy to have someone decent on your bench when the money could be better spent on filling your starting eleven with high scorers.<br><b>3) Play your wildcard early.</b> You get one chance per season to make as many transfers as you want in a gameweek without it costing you points. It is pointless to save this for later as by the end of the season players will cost what they are truly worth and bargains are hard to find. Everyone makes mistakes with their initial selection as in my experience preseason form is pretty awful indicator of how players will do when the PL kicks of for real. In addition there is almost always someone who makes the headlines early on for unexpectedly strong performances, e.g. Hull's Geovanni at the start of the 2008-09 season, and you want to get these cheap, but high scoring, players in your team as early as possible. Use your wildcard early to draft in the form players and get rid of the dross. If you need any further convincing then you sould note that the 2008 winner played his in gameweek 2 and the 2009 winner in week 6.<br><b>4) Check the fixture list.</b> To get the most out of a player you need them playing when they are on form, but it also helps if their upcoming games are either mostly at home, against lesser opposition or, as is often the case later in the season, are twice in a gameweek. Similarly, it can hurt you if you bring in some wonderkid just before they go on the road against the big four.<br><b>5) Don't panic!</b> Just because you get an injury, a suspension or a team doesn't play in a gameweek don't drop good players. Apart from it costing you points if you go over your one transfer per week you may find with shifting prices you can't afford to buy them back. Generally speaking you should only transfer out players that aren't performing for you anymore.<br><b>6) Never make more than one transfer a week.</b> As this costs you 4 points it is almost always a false economy, see point 6. The only exception to this is the wildcard, see point 3. I make one (free) transfer a week and so did the 2009 winner.<br><b>7) Watch football.</b> A simple one really, but checking a player's fantasy stats won't tell you how well they are actually playing. Just watching <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/match_of_the_day/">Match of the Day</a> can really help identify your next acquisition, or who to get rid of. Apart from anything else I have found that injuries and suspensions can be slow to be added to the Premier League's website. It won't help your cause to make captain someone who got stretchered off in their last game.<br><b>8) It's not all about goals.</b> Some of the highest point scorers in the game are defenders and these are often the most value for money. Strikers are actually the least efficient players (in terms of points per million cost). Don't rule out playing 5-3-2.<br><b>9) Pick a balanced side.</b> Finally, distributing your team across multiple different clubs is alway a good idea. This is basically "don't put all your eggs in one basket", but it can severely affect your gameweek total if you rely heavily on just a few teams who end up with bad results. In addition, you may actually like to rotate some of your cheaper players. For example, I had both Schwarzer (Fulham keeper) and Jaaskelainen (Bolton keeper) for most of 2008-09, and would regularly switch who started depending on who Bolton and Fulham were playing.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Graeme Lloyd writes <i>this life's a fiction</i> at http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com.</div>http://thislifesafiction.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-top-9-tips-for-fanatasy-football.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Malacoda)0